Most "bootcamp" programs have quite a narrow focus and use mainstream technologies, e.g. Ruby on Rails, Python or iOS. It would be cool to find one that uses Lisp but I'd be surprised! Hacker School isn't a bootcamp so it doesn't really fit into that model (it has plenty of Lisp programmers!)

Ooops.... I hit enter too quickly and I can't edit the comment. The link is https://www.youtube.co...­ The talk is "What happened to Smalltalk could happen to Ruby, too." The thing about blaming say DARPA is that it just pushes the question back one level. Why did DARPA stop funding LISP? And again I think the Bob Martin talk addresses some of this.

DARPA stopped funding Lisp projects because Lisp became synonymous with all the early AI research. That research was promising to crack high-level intelligence in a relatively short order. While many important research goals were met, AI research up through the 80s failed to deliver anywhere near the claims of the AI research community. The problem wasn't Lisp, it was naive and unrealistic claims from AI researchers that soured DARPA. The fall of Lisp was collateral damage.

Before the web days, a language had to had proper UI library for some major platform. Lisp did not - yes, I have developed in Allegro CommonLisp for Macintosh, but they inevitably got behind and did not implement all facets of that toolbox. And on other platforms, I never found a solid truly extensive UI library in any Lisp.

In these web days, a language has to have a proper MVC-based web framework to survive.

Tcl/Tk just doesn't cut it, in the end. Well, unless you are artificially kept alive, like Ada or Haskell, by big interest or Academia.

I liked the talk overall but the hook wore a little bit on me. "Lisp is too powerful - why would anyone want to do [some interesting thing]?"
And that this played into what felt to me like a somewhat uncritical complacent audience. Many of the other languages in fact have similar power (copied from Lisp or a LISP derivative).
That clojurescript compiles down to javascript in of itself suggests that javascript is just as powerful (if perhaps more verbose or awkward).
There heuristic that a material can't be both tough and hard http://www.gemsociety.org/wow/jj5.htm I think somehting is similar applies in Programming Languages where something can't be both Powerful and {safe, fast, generally applicable or generally accessible}.

Yes, Clojure is compilable into any Turing complete language, such as Applesoft BASIC, but that hardly makes the latter as powerful given any reasonable metrics in this context.

Also, ClojureScript happens to only include a sub set of Clojure - with complete lack of the introspection via 'eval' - and even an important included aspect, macros, which is included is actually carried out entirely outside of JavaScript. This is partly due to the lack of power (...) in JavaScript.

So, let me put it this way: things you can do in a Lisp language can always be done in another language, but not without typing much more.

Yes, all Turing complete languages are Turing complete. In fact, you could do everything that David Nolan demoed today by typing out 1's and 0's. The point is that different programming languages offer different tradeoffs in terms of performance, clarity, expressiveness, etc., and based on those criteria David was making the case for Lisp, quite successfully in my opinion.

To your other point, programming languages are not physical materials and are bound by entirely different constraints. Lisp is powerful, safe, fast and generally applicable. Whether or not it's accessible is up to each individual to determine for themselves. If you don't find it accessible, then don't use it.

I don't want to belabor the point or get into a flame war, so this will be the last I write on this. (3 parts because of the 1000 character limit)

I am not arguing with the assertion that "Lisp is too powerful". It makes provocative title that draws people in. All of this is good.

But there are two caveats. The first has to do with the word "Lisp" and the second has to do with the word "Powerful".

First, Lisp is not *exclusively* too powerful. There are other programming langauges that have similar power. And I am sure advocates other programming languages could just as easily show that.

One part of the justification of power that was somewhat implicitly stated is that power is the ability to do alot with little coding. And some of the examples of this had to do with the logic binding or pattern matching languages. Prolog, for example, was mentioned. But Prolog is not Lisp. You can *implement* Prolog in Lisp as is often done with not to much trouble.

[continued...]Because WITHOUT TOO MUCH TROUBLE one can implement a more powerful (in certain specific ways) language, this bolters the powerful Lisp argument. But the same could also be said of Javascript. To compile down closurescript to javascript wasn't the same amount of complexity as say to assembler. That the size of the resulting javascript wasn't that large. Javascript has garbage collection and closures which is why it makes it a closer fit as a runtime than assembly.

Before moving off this aspect "Lisp" exclusively, I do want to mention one thing that I thought was perhaps a little misrepresented. David suggested Monkey patching as one way to extend behavior in Ruby but said the problem is that it was too pervasive for what he wanted. But monkey patching is not the only way to extend. Classes and Object instances can be extended at compile, load, or run time as well. So Ruby, for example, supports aspect-oriented programming well. Or the Decorator design pattern. [more...]

The second caveat is the power part. Power is good. It is just not something large organizations want everyone to *easily* have all the time without oversight. Think of a nuclear missle. It is powerful, and I would argue too powerful. I visited a decommissioned underground missle site in Puma Arizona. In order for that missle to go off, two people had to have two keys and turn them at the same time. The two-key aspect is not inherent in nuclear bomb technology. It is all totally artifically added on for safety. Likewise I imagine similar artifical saftey measures (and backup, backout procedures) are instituted when updated satellite software or OS upgrades.

That's a good point about Power vs. Safety. I think Bob Martin addresses a similar argument in his "What killed Smalltalk could kill Ruby" video (https://www.youtube.co...­). tl;dw: Automated testing is one of the ways an organization can control the amount of safety it wants while using a powerful language.

Just realized that it is my wife's birthday, and for some reason, I think that she would inflict more physical damage than would Mr. Nolen, were I not to show up. So, enjoy the Lispesque discussions and hope to see you soon!

I actually created a pretty big system in Object-Oriented Assembler - yep, paradoxes do exist and can be productive; in fact, and slightly tangential, it is the paradox of Gödel's incompleteness (meta) theory (and the analogous Russel's paradoxes) that, through duality, yield the power and beauty of constructive (or intuitive) mathematic. Slightly tangential, yes...

Impressive. I actually programmed in 8086/8088 Assembler everyday for an entire summer. I managed to a write a self-modifying program. When I showed the my professor, he siad "don't do that!". :-)But I've always felt a strange similarity between machine language and Lisp in that, these are languages in which data and code are truly the same.

Really good point! Lisp indeed has that feeling of connection to the underlying beast. A perfect blend of "close to the curb" while being the abstractivist's wet dream. Maybe that is the power of which David will speak? :-)

oh dear!!! i am completely STOKED and on FIRE for this lecture!! in fact, i EVEN RECEIVED A DIRECT INVITATION FROM Sir Lacaze!!! He wrote "This is not optional, you MUST be there, you're attendance is both REQUIRED and EXPECTED!!!!!!!!" HENCEFORTH, I AM COMING!!!!

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